The Heavens Might Crack: The Death and Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Today, his murder is seen as a national tragedy, a moment of collective shame. Yet at the time, King was a polarizing figure—scorned by many white Americans, worshipped by some African Americans and liberal whites, and deemed irrelevant by younger blacks—and his assassination was met with uncomfortably mixed reactions. In The Heavens Might Crack, historian Jason Sokol trace...